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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23084539">As If You Were There</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haberdasher/pseuds/Haberdasher'>Haberdasher</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Canon, Arachnophobia, Archivist Jonathan Sims, Canon Related, Canon Rewrite, Conspiracy Theories, Darkness, Dogs, Episode Related, Episode Remix, Episode Style, Family, Gen, Ghosts, Haunted Houses, Haunting, Spiders, Statement Fic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 11:21:45</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,622</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23084539</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haberdasher/pseuds/Haberdasher</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The statements from Episode 100 rewritten as regular statements, with a fair bit of creative liberty taken to fill in the missing details.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>31</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Statement of Lynne Hammond</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Statement of Lynne Hammond, regarding a ghost that haunted her old flat in Clapton. Original statement given May the 2nd, 2017. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.</p><p>Statement begins.</p><p>God, I’m glad to be rid of my old flat. I mean, moving’s a right pain in the arse and all, but it’s better than things going downhill any further. I never signed up for any of this, you know? Wasn’t exactly part of my lease agreement. So maybe it’s someone else’s problem now, I don’t know, as long as it’s not mine. That probably sounds bad, but oh well. Wasn’t even my idea to come to you lot in the first place, I don’t really care what you think of me.</p><p>It started about a year ago. I don’t remember exactly the date it first started, but I know it was around the time I broke up with Charlie, and that was the day after April Fools’ Day, 2016. No, it’s not a coincidence, and no, I won’t be getting into that whole mess with you lot. Doubt it really has to do with any ghost business anyway, except maybe that he stopped spending most nights in my flat with me after that. I was by myself again, which was fine by me, especially given the alternative.</p><p>The first I noticed of it was a burning smell that woke me up in the middle of the night. Now, I’m usually a pretty deep sleeper--once my head hits the pillow, I’m gone until morning--so just waking up like that was already pretty weird. But that burning smell... I mean, the first time I smelled it, I honestly thought the place was on fire. I’ve never been in a big fire like that, but I imagine that’s what it would smell like--like a campfire, sort of, with wood burning and smoke getting in your eyes, but on a way bigger scale.</p><p>I got out of bed, hoping it was just part of a dream or that I was imagining things, but that smell just wouldn’t go away. House wasn’t burning down, though, which was more important, I figured. Didn’t fancy running for my life in a ratty nightgown and worn-down slippers at two in the morning.</p><p>Looking for fire like that, though, it didn’t take me long before I saw her.</p><p>I didn’t get a good look at her that first night, and she never stuck around for long, but I’m pretty sure she always stayed the same. Looked like a young woman, probably in her twenties, hair long and loose, wearing a dress that nearly hit the floor. But I couldn’t tell you much else, because the biggest thing was, she was on fire, head to toe. Can’t exactly make out much through that.</p><p>She was on fire, but none of my stuff was on fire, which I think is why I figured she wasn’t just some burglar who’d got set alight somehow. She flailed around a bit, and her hand almost touched my lampshade, but the lampshade was fine. Wasn’t even warm to the touch when I checked. That’s when she locked eyes with me, though, and her mouth sort of contorted itself, almost like she was screaming, or calling out to me, but whatever it was, I couldn’t hear it.</p><p>Then she disappeared, and all that was left was the vague smell of smoke. Like, if before was a giant campfire, this was after the campfire’d been put out.</p><p>I went back to sleep after that, but it did take me a bit, that first night.</p><p>I never did anything about it, at that point, never talked about it with anyone. Maybe I should have, I dunno. But she never hung around longer than a couple minutes, none of my stuff was ever damaged, and it all seemed, well, a bit crazy. No offense, I guess. But it wasn’t exactly the sort of thing I wanted to chat about with my friends, let alone the police.</p><p>And after a few nights of this, it was almost normal to me. Wake up at two in the morning smelling like the place is burning down around me, see a woman on fire flailing around before she disappears, go back to bed. I stopped even getting out of bed to check if the house was on fire after the first week. Just stayed in bed, watching the ghost woman be on fire, until she wasn’t. Weird, sure, but I suppose it’s proof you can get used to just about anything if you have to.</p><p>I’m not sure when I realized she was getting closer every night. Few weeks in, I think? It might’ve been sooner, but I think I was trying to just ignore the whole thing, as much as I could, anyway. She always looked my way before she disappeared, so maybe when I stopped going to her, she had to come to me.</p><p>I suppose you’d know better than me about that. You’re the ghost experts here, right? Not really my thing, personally. Didn’t even really believe in the stuff until my flat was the one getting haunted.</p><p>But at some point, I realized that every night, she kept getting closer to me before disappearing. Not a great sign in hindsight, but I didn’t think much of it at the time, except that it meant I definitely had to stay up the whole time until she disappeared. Can’t exactly go back to sleep when there’s a woman on fire in the middle of your bedroom.</p><p>I didn’t keep track of how close she was getting, or how much closer she got every night, but I think that night I knew, before I went to bed, that that night would be different. It took me longer than normal to get to sleep. Trying to delay the inevitable, perhaps.</p><p>But sure enough, two in the morning came--it always started just after two in the morning, every time I checked--and there was that burning smell again, and the woman was...</p><p>Well. She was standing pretty close to my bed. And when she moved around, she came even closer, until she was standing right by my bedside.</p><p>I looked at her. She looked at me. She opened her mouth in that silent scream again.</p><p>And then she did something new. She reached out to me.</p><p>I’d never felt the heat from her before that night, but as her arm approached my own I could feel the fire that covered her entire body, and I could feel it about to touch mine, too. It was sweltering, despite being the middle of January. And her arm was about to grab mine, and I didn’t know what would happen at that point. Would I get set on fire? Would I end up being a ghost like her? Whatever it was, I was sure it would be nothing good.</p><p>As it happened, she disappeared after just barely brushing against me, but that was enough. Some of the hairs on my right arm were burned right off. I half-expected they’d be healed in the morning, after I went back to sleep, but no, still burned.</p><p>That time, it was a few arm hairs, no big deal. They’ve already grown back by now. But next time? When she got even closer? I didn’t know what would happen. I didn’t want to know.</p><p>So I moved out before I had to find out the hard way. Spent a couple weeks staying with my friend Liv, did some rather hectic flat-hunting, got a new place and never looked back. Until now, I guess.</p><p>See, my friend Gav told me about you people. When I moved in with Liv, between the sudden move and my burned arm hairs, she made me tell her the whole story, and she’s kind of a blabbermouth, so soon enough all my friends knew about it. Gav was the one who’d heard of the Magnus Institute, said you lot are always on the look-out for new ghost stories to add to your little collection.</p><p>So. I saw a ghost. Is that enough of a ghost story for you?</p><p>Statement ends.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Statement of "John Smith"</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Statement of John Smith, regarding a supernatural encounter within the depths of the abandoned Aldwych Tube station. Original statement given May the 13th, 2017. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.</p><p>Statement begins.</p><p>Look, I’m not giving you my name and address and birth date and goddamn blood type so you can go hand it all over to the bloody government when I’m done. Maybe you don’t do that sort of thing, maybe all that talk about confidentiality is more than just lip service, but I can’t trust you just like that. I’m not sure who I can trust, not anymore. I trusted my friend--let’s call him Jeremy, I trusted Jeremy--but that’s about it, and now he’s not here, and I don’t know what agencies will help and what agencies will just rat me out to the perpetrators. I’ve heard of your field, found a few web pages a while back, but that’s not much to go on. I just really hope you’re one of the good ones.</p><p>D’you know about Aldwych Tube station? Well, it’s not a Tube station anymore--there’s still trains running at the platform level, but the station itself isn’t running anymore, it’s been abandoned for decades now. So many of the things there are all in original condition--the original adverts are still up, things like that, never removed that stuff after they shut it all down. It’s part of London’s history, y’know, it’s public transport, it’s interesting.</p><p>But when Jeremy and I decided to break in there, it wasn’t just about about the public transport stuff and the adverts. We wanted to have a look around because we had some ideas about what else might be down there, maybe there was something worth investigating there. It’s the right kind of place for it, hiding in plain sight, unused space in the middle of London but nobody thinks twice about it because oh, it’s just an old Tube station, everybody knows that. But we figured maybe it’s <em>not</em> just an old Tube station, maybe there’s more to it than that.</p><p>Suppose we were right about that bit, at least. Just wish we could’ve learned it without losing Jeremy in the process.</p><p>We were in the tunnels when it happened. Already saw the adverts, the usual public transportation stuff, nothing too exciting there, but that wasn’t a surprise. We weren’t the first ones to break in there, not by a long shot, so it couldn’t be that easy. But the tunnels, they could be hiding something for sure. Jeremy and I both had torches with us--it was evening then, but it was gloomy enough in those tunnels that I doubt they’d be much lighter in the day time. It started out pretty boring, just following train tracks, no signs of anything.</p><p>Then our torches went out. Both of them, at the same time. And we’d packed them with fresh batteries, too. Can’t have been a coincidence there. Maybe the government made some kind of field down there that messes with electronics, just in case someone came poking around, getting too close to what they’re hiding down there.</p><p>Now, it was proper dark down there without the torches. Couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. But Jeremy started rambling about what he was doing, came closer and said he’d get his phone out and use it as a torch since the actual torches were a bust. I wasn’t big on his bringing the phone in the first place--too easy for the wrong people to track--but having the light from it definitely would’ve been better than nothing.  But the phone wouldn’t light up either. Thought it had died too, but then Jeremy tried to turn it on and it made a sound like it was turning off, though the screen hadn’t shown a thing the whole time.</p><p>Electronics disrupter, I’m telling you. Screwing with the EMF field. It’s gotta be.</p><p>Jeremy wanted to turn around then, just call it a bust and go home, but I figured this meant we were close to something big, exactly the sort of thing we’d come for in the first place, and I talked him into going a bit further before giving up. ‘Course I regret it now, but how could I have known?</p><p>We linked arms to make sure we each knew where the other one was in the dark, even though it made walking a little awkward, and Jeremy definitely stepped on my shoes more than once down there; to be fair, I probably paid him back in kind along the way. Tried to keep going straight, best as we could figure, but we kept bumping into the same wall over and over again. No matter how much we course-corrected, we kept bumping into this smooth, cold wall on either side, though the tunnels had seemed plenty big when we started out. No way the trains could pass through a space that small.</p><p>I pointed that out to Jeremy, actually, said we must be getting close to something then, and it was right after that that we first saw them.</p><p>Couldn’t tell you what they looked like, height, weight, gender, any of that stuff. For one thing, it was way too dark to make out any of those kinds of details, and for another, they were dressed to blend in, to hide that identifying information further. Could be some sort of military camouflage prototypes, adapted to the darkness of the tunnels. I could only see the faint snippets where their pitch-black clothes didn’t quite cover them--gaps between long sleeves and gloves, or between a turtleneck and a ski mask--and even then, they had to be pretty close first. If it really was camouflage like I thought, well, it wasn’t perfect, but it sure got the job done.</p><p>The first one I saw was off to the right, so we tried to go around, but just bumped into the wall on the left instead. Jeremy was on my left, and I think he got a few scrapes there, heard him wince in pain. Then I saw a flash of skin from another figure, and another, and my stomach began to sink.</p><p>I was sure there were five of them there. I don’t know how I was so sure, given that I only saw them in brief flashes, small snippets of skin that could’ve been the same person over and over, but I was sure. And if it was two on two, or even three on two, I might’ve been willing to duke it out, but five on two’s hardly a fair fight, is it?</p><p>I heard something in the distance, a loud, long sound that reminded me a little of a train coming, and I remembered this was a Tube station, or had been, though I didn’t think any trains were supposed to run that late. I thought maybe one was heading towards us, or coming from behind, though there were no lights to show as much, so I told Jeremy to run.</p><p>I heard my own breathing then, and could just barely make out Jeremy’s as we tried to head back, but I swear, I <em>swear</em> I didn’t hear a single breath from the five that were after us. Maybe they were robots that just looked like humans. Wouldn’t surprise me.</p><p>Whatever they were, they were after us for sure now. Even as we tried to get away, to dodge, they just kept getting closer. Tried heading to the right, but hit the wall pretty quick, even though we’d just hit the other one. Tried walking backwards but, well, that’s hard enough on your own, let alone when you’ve got your arms linked up to someone else.</p><p>So we just broke arms and ran. Every man for himself isn’t pretty, sure, and I’m far from proud of it, but sometimes that’s all you can do. If we’d stayed together, we’d prob’ly both be gone now.</p><p>At one point when I was running I saw a light back the way I came, looking like it was coming from everywhere all at once, and after being in the dark that long it hurt my eyes to see. I could see then that Jeremy was behind me, that the men in black were all gathered around him now. He was on the ground, so either he fell along the way or one of them knocked him down; probably the latter, if I had to guess. Either way, I hadn’t heard it, just that low rumble of a train that never quite arrived.</p><p>Part of me wanted to go towards the light, like it’d be safer, but I figured it had to be a trap. The only place that light could be coming from was their secret holding facility, and I wasn’t being dragged in there for the life of me. Plus, that roaring noise had only gotten louder when it showed up. So I ran the other way and made sure not to look back.</p><p>Eventually the sound faded away and I saw a sliver of light from above, managed to climb my way out of Aldwych station, but I never saw Jeremy again. I came back the next day with all the industrial torches I could buy with cash without triggering any government alarms, found the torches we’d dropped along the way--both still dead--and Jeremy’s phone--also dead, and screen way more cracked than it had been when we started--and a spot of blood on the wall, but no sign of Jeremy.</p><p>I tried going to the tabloids first, the kind that publish what they know is the truth, no matter what the authorities try to claim. I figured Jeremy’s younger, decent-looking bloke, and pretty well-off these days, so even if none of them believed the government connection--and none of them did, or at least, none of them were willing to admit it--I figured his disappearance would be a human interest story, and the details could come out later. They all turned me down and laughed me out of the room, though. A few suggested going to the police, but I knew better; at best I’d get arrested for trespassing, at worst I’d be locked up down in the tunnels with Jeremy. One of them looked to be in the middle of calling me a shrink, or worse, when I just up and left. And one mentioned your name as an alternative.</p><p>Even if you had all my details, I’m sure you wouldn’t tell me if you sent someone down into the tunnels the same way we’d gone, or got in touch with your government connections to arrange a deal, or whatever. That confidentiality agreement of yours goes both ways, I imagine. But I don’t need all those details. I just need you to get back Jeremy for me.</p><p>Or if you can’t--if he’s too far gone, if they’re already testing bioweapons on him, or they already wiped his mind, or did something else that means he isn’t coming back--make damn sure nobody else goes the same way he did.</p><p>Statement ends.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Statement Of Robin Lennox</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Statement of Robin Lennox, regarding a stone circle discovered in the South Downs. Original statement given May the 20th, 2017. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.</p><p>Statement begins.</p><p>It started about two weeks ago, on the 6th, when me and Jackie--Jackie’s my dog--were walking down the South Downs which is what we normally do before we go visit my mother--she lives in Lewes--for a roast.</p><p>I visit her most Saturdays, she does a big Sunday roast for the occasion except it’s on Saturday, so really more of a Saturday roast, I suppose. But she always home cooks a big meal for just the two of us--the three of us really, counting Jackie, but she just gets the scraps.</p><p>We’re close, my mother and I, especially after my father... well, my father wasn’t a nice man, didn’t treat either of us well at all, and that could have torn the whole family apart, but I think it just brought my mum and I closer together, you know? It was just the two of us against him, the two of us against the world really. And then when he passed, there was no more “against” there, but it was still just the two of us.</p><p>Well, and Jackie. My father never let us keep a dog, so I think me getting Jackie was a big thrill for both of us. Mum spoils her, always gives her lots of attention, I think Saturdays must be Jackie’s favorite day of the week now because of it.</p><p>Anyway, it was about noon that day when things started to get a bit weird. Jackie and I, we were walking along--Jackie was off her leash, she just loves to run off the leash--and off in the distance, something caught my eye. I just barely saw it at first, and I have pretty good eyesight, too. And I thought to myself, that stone circle, that wasn’t there before.</p><p>So me and Jackie went off to investigate--Jackie’s quite a curious dog, most Jack Russell terriers are I believe--and as I was walking towards it, I noticed it got quite a lot chillier. It was quite a sunny day, I don’t think there was any wind or anything, and I hadn’t taken a jacket with me, but I definitely felt a bit of a chill as I got near it. And Jackie started to walk closer to me, running off a lot less than she normally does, which struck me as rather odd.</p><p>When I got closer, I realized that something about the stone circle, maybe the texture of the rocks, made it look quite old. But I was sure I hadn’t seen the stone circle before, even though they looked like they had been there for a long time. I’d taken that route a few times before, at least five or six times at a guess, and I didn’t remember seeing it at all.</p><p>I didn’t think too much of it at the time. I do like to vary up my route on these walks a fair bit, try and find new things to check out along the way, so when I saw the stone circle I just figured, hey, here’s something new to look into, good way to spend a few minutes. So I was actually kind of excited when I looked and saw that the circle was just the outside bit of it, that there was a whole stone spiral path on the inside. I didn’t hesitate to follow it, and Jackie stayed right by my side the whole way.</p><p>You know those little hedge mazes at places like Hampton Court, how rather than bounding straight into the middle of them you have to follow it through? It put me in mind of that, exploring that maze. The stones weren’t actually that tall, I could see above them if I wanted to, but I figured it was more fun to just go through the maze, try to solve it on my own. Though I was pretty rubbish at it, really, kept getting caught up in the same few turns...</p><p>As I was meandering around, I heard the sound of an old man crying. I couldn’t see the source of the cry, you understand, but it was definitely an old man just from the sound of it--there was an <em>age</em> in that voice. It sounded like it was coming from the middle of the spiral, best I could tell. So I picked up the pace a little, tried to see if I could find who was crying, but that just meant I made the same mistakes but faster trying to find my way around.</p><p>I was so focused on finding my way through the maze that I didn’t pay attention to much else, but it was still quite a shock when I looked at my watch and realized that six hours had gone by in the blink of an eye. Suddenly I realized I was going to be late for my mum’s dinner, and I couldn’t do that to her. Those roasts are the highlights of her week--of both our weeks, really--and she would be quite disappointed if she knew I’d missed it just because I got distracted by some stone maze I’d stumbled upon.</p><p>The thing is, the stones weren’t so tall that I couldn’t see the next path over, but I was in pretty deep now, and I couldn’t actually see the way out from that far in. Working my way out the same way I’d gone in would take hours too, I imagined, maybe even longer than the first time around. The funny thing was, the stone circle hadn’t even appeared that big from the outside, but now it seemed like it stretched almost to the horizon.</p><p>Almost to the horizon, but not quite. In the distance I could see a patch of rusty red sticking up from behind the stones--that’s the color of my mum’s roof, bit of an unusual choice but she always liked how it stood out like that. I noticed Jackie was shivering a bit, so I gave her lots of pets along the way, tried to ignore the chill that I could still feel myself, and just sort of... followed my mum’s roof out of there. I knew that way was home, so I took every turn that would get me closer to it, and within a matter of minutes I got out of the spiral.</p><p>After I got out Jackie seemed a bit more spirited again, and I went to dinner, and everything was normal enough. I walked that same path last Saturday, though, and I didn’t see the stone circle, though I kept an eye out for it and everything. Seemed like it vanished as suddenly as it had appeared in the first place. Can’t say that I miss it, really, though I do still wonder what would have happened if I’d made my way to the center, who that old man I heard crying might have been. Opportunity missed, I suppose, but some things have to take priority, and my mum’s weekly roast is definitely one of them.</p><p>Statement ends.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Statement Of Brian Finlinson</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Statement of Brian Finlinson, regarding a supernatural infestation of spiders in his flat. Original statement given May the 26th, 2017. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.</p><p>Statement begins.</p><p>It’s hard to say when all of this started, when the spiders in my flat stopped being just normal spiders and started being, well, <em>weird</em>. A couple months, at least, maybe longer, but it started gradually, so it’s hard to know for sure. When it’s just one in the bathroom, a bit of web in the corner, that’s normal, I get that, though even that’s not my favorite; I don’t like spiders, see, never have, never will. But before I’d just, y’know, ask a friend to deal with the stray spider or something, not a big deal.</p><p>We’re well past that now, though, I know that much. At some point it went from one or two to more, to lots more, from web in the corner of one room to web in the corner of <em>every</em> room, and it’s just managed to get even worse from there.</p><p>Maybe if they acted normal it’d be different. I mean, there’s hundreds of spiders in there--I’m sure of that, I tried counting them once--but that’s what exterminators are for, right? They wouldn’t exist if it weren’t a common enough problem to begin with, having lots of bugs come swarming in where people don’t want them. But they just- they just don’t act like <em>spiders</em>. I feel like they’re watching me--not like I can see their little spider eyes or anything, but they sort of move when I move, and when I move rooms there’s always a flow of spiders heading to be in the same room as me.</p><p>There’s different types of them, too, different-- species, is it, with spiders? And they don’t normally gather in groups of different species, I’ve read as much before, but in my flat they are, all the different types of spiders working together, big and small and in between.</p><p>As much as they like being in the same room as me, though, I can’t get too close. I can’t just squish the spiders, for one thing. If I go to touch them, they don’t let me get near. Even if I get a newspaper or whatever, go to whack them with something besides my own body, they seem to know somehow what I’m about to do, always get out of the way just in time.</p><p>They’re leaving web everywhere, too. Not just in the corners of rooms, that’d be normal enough, but it’s all over my furniture, too. I can feel it when I sit down on my sofa if it’s been a while, long enough for new web to be all over it, to get the whole thing feeling sticky. My microwave’s so thickly webbed that I can barely read the numbers on it anymore. That’s weird, right? That’s freaky, spiders don’t <em>do</em> that.</p><p>And the exterminator thing, that’s the weirdest part--I didn’t just bring that up out of nowhere, see, I actually had an exterminator called to my flat to come and look at the problem. I was sure they’d charge me an arm and a leg, but whatever the cost, I figured it’d be worth it just to get rid of these spiders already. But when the exterminator came, they all disappeared--it was the first time there’d been no spiders there in weeks! Not a single spider that he could see. He thought I was just pulling his leg or something, told me not to waste his time again.</p><p>And then the minute the exterminator closed the door, the spiders all came back, like they’d never gone anywhere at all.</p><p>I’m never been the most social person, but the whole spider problem’s killed a lot of what social life I had left. I haven’t invited anyone to come over for ages because, well, there’s spiders everywhere, webs everywhere, who’d want to come be part of that? But whenever I leave home, I keep looking for spiders out of the corner of my eye, wondering if they’re following me, watching me even when I’ve gotten away...</p><p>The part that got me thinking that this was supernatural for sure, though, the part that got me thinking I should talk to you guys, well, that just happened a few days ago. The other day I was in my bedroom for a while, just sitting there reading, when I thought I heard the doorbell ring. I wasn’t expecting anyone, and I wasn’t sure that what I heard was the doorbell, but I still got up and went to leave the bedroom, go check on the front door...</p><p>I couldn’t, though, because the spiders had webbed my bedroom door shut.</p><p>Even if it’d been a couple hours, enough spiders leaving enough web to seal the door... that just doesn’t seem right.</p><p>And I tried opening it, tried forcing it open, but the web was stronger than me, I suppose, because I couldn’t. It wouldn’t budge an inch. They’d trapped me in there.</p><p>That’s the time I tried counting the spiders, after I realized I couldn’t focus on reading anymore, couldn’t focus on much of anything once I knew I couldn’t leave the room. Lost count somewhere around two hundred. And all of those spiders were in one room, just stuck in there with me.</p><p>I ended up just going to bed early and in the morning the door opened just fine, like there’d never been any web there at all, but the spiders were still there as much as ever--if anything, I felt like there were even more of them watching me now.</p><p>I don’t know what to do anymore. I think they’re following me, even now. I think they followed me here; I saw a spider in the basement outside, and I got the same feeling from it as from the others, like it was after me, watching me. It had this sticky webbing, too, the same kind they’ve been leaving on my sofa, and I just... I don’t know how I can keep going on like this.</p><p>This is the first time I’ve been in a room for weeks where I haven’t seen a spider. I’ve been looking, but though I still feel like something’s watching me, I haven’t seen a single one. I don’t know what that means, though. Maybe this place is safe, maybe they’re waiting right outside for me. You’d know better than me, right? You’re the experts.</p><p>I hope this place is safe, at least. Maybe that’s what I need, just one safe place without spiders, and then if I have to deal with them everywhere else I can live with that, just so long as I know they’re not everywhere. That would be enough for me.</p><p>But I don’t know if I can have even that much anymore.</p><p>Statement ends.</p><p>(Brian Finlinson could not be contacted for follow-up.)</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>If you liked this, consider following me on tumblr at <a href="https://haberdashing.tumblr.com/">haberdashing</a>!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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